A Survival Guide for When Your PPC Manager Goes on Vacation

We all need time off to unplug and enjoy some much-needed relaxation time away from the constant buzz of the internet. While that time is precious for those who are finally away from their computers, it can be a stressful time for those who have to watch over those programs.

What do you do when your PPC Manager goes on vacation, and you’re left to manage an account that you don’t understand? We’re here to help walk you through that process and reduce your stress levels.

Before the Vacation

The work starts before your manager goes on vacation. There are some specific questions you need to ask to understand what might need to be done or react to any changes.

Bidding

How are bids being set? If they are automated, then is there anything you need to manage? If they are manual, how are they being calculated and set, and what’s the process that you should follow to set new bids?

Daily Uploads

Are there any regular uploads that happen? These can range from ecommerce uploads for your products, ad customizers, or conversion data for offline imports. If there are daily uploads that are happening, how do you upload them? If they are automated uploads, how do you check if they were successfully updated or handle any errors that arise from the upload?

Budgets

Do budgets change over the month, or is there something that needs to be monitored and potential action is taken, like pausing campaigns when budgets are exhausted?

Ad Disapprovals

If ads are disapproved, what’s the most common reason, and do you need to do anything? For instance, some companies have ads disapproved because Google thinks they are advertising in an industry with specific guidelines, such as medical. If these are common for your company, what’s the process your analyst uses to resubmit ads?

Critical Daily or Weekly Tasks

Are there other essential daily or weekly tasks the manager is involved with that you need to perform. It’s usually OK if you skip a week looking for new negative keywords or pausing losing ads. It can be dangerous for someone who doesn’t know PPC well to add negative keywords as you can stop a lot of potential conversions by accident. These are not the tasks your PPC manager would perform if they were in the office—these are tasks that are critical to ensuring the account continues to run effectively while your manager is away.

Disaster Recovery

What happens if something catastrophic happens? Usually, in PPC, this is a significant drop in conversions, or the phone stops ringing. Is this something that’s common? If so, what is the usual fix, and how do you implement it?

Get Account Access

Google can be finicky about account access. Make sure you can log in to Google Ads and Microsoft Ads with your email and credentials. If the PPC manager gives you their login data, and Google or Microsoft decides something looks off, you need to know all the recovery questions to get back into the account. It is best to have your own account login.

Other Account Access

In some cases, you might need access to other accounts, such as Google Merchant Center, any 3rd party software providers, or Google Analytics. Make sure you have access to all the accounts you need and what you should look for in each account.

Receive Email Notifications

Make sure you are receiving email notifications from Google and Microsoft about the account. It won’t do you much good to have access but then not know that Google just disabled several ads because you didn’t get notified of the problem.

Once you have access, notifications, and are aware of the processes that you must do in the absence of your PPC manager, it’s OK for them to go on vacation.

During the Vacation

During the vacation, your job is to make sure the account stays the course. You should not be doing random creative testing, creating experiments, or randomly adding keywords.

If you get curious about Google Ads and start looking around at best practices, Google’s suggestions, or do some keyword research, don’t just add these to the account. Instead, make notes of your ideas and other questions you might have.

Just because something is a best practice for the industry does not mean it’s always the best thing to do in your specific account. You hired a PPC manager for a reason, and they know what they are doing, so don’t start changing anything because you think it might be a good idea or seems logical. There may be an excellent reason for why it’s not that way in your account.

Make sure any processes that you have to perform are done promptly. Snoozing the reminder to upload your conversion data for a few days can have tremendous negative consequences on an account that is using automated bidding based upon conversion data. Make sure you do the tasks on a daily and weekly basis that your PPC manager laid out for you to perform.

If trouble arises for which you have a process, such as ad disapprovals, then follow the outlined process.

If trouble arises for which you don’t have any context, you might be called on to learn a bit more about PPC than you thought. If you have a basic understanding of ad groups and targeting, then you might be able to diagnose the issue. If you are called on to do some in-depth work, then start by watching this video about When Good Google Ads Campaigns Go Bad as it can help provide a lot of context for why things go wrong.

If you are only following the tasks your PPC manager set out for you, then there’s a very low chance that things will quickly go wrong where you’ll have to step in and intervene. In most cases, PPC campaigns can glide along for a week or two while someone is on vacation without disaster striking.

After the Vacation

When your PPC manager is back, it is time for the debrief. Sit down and talk with them about what you did, any suggestions you had, and all the questions that will arise from playing with a new advertising tool that is so complex, there are many ways to perform the same task.

It’s beneficial to have documented what changes you made, why, when, and where, such as a specific campaign or a 3rd party tool. That way, the manager can look over any changes and ensure that they are doing precisely what they were supposed to accomplish.

Everyone needs time off, and every company needs to keep its advertising active and productive while employees are out of the office. By following this simple guide to properly prepare for someone besides the PPC manager overseeing the account for a short while, you can be confident that your advertising can be productive while your employees take a vacation.